As new types of payment devices are developed for consumers, new types of mechanisms are also developed to read those devices. For example, magnetic stripe transactions are well known and widely used. These types of transactions can be referred to in some cases as legacy transactions providing account information in legacy format. Alternatively, an integrated circuit (IC) chip card, such as the type that can be used to conduct contactless (e.g., PayWave™) transactions, can include account information in a chip type format.
Data on a magnetic stripe is limited, which means that the amount of data that can be sent in an authorization request message in a legacy format is also limited. On an IC chip card or other portable payment device employing a chip, more financial information can be stored than on a magnetic stripe, which means that chip type transactions can contain more data than magnetic stripe transactions. If more data is permitted during a transaction, the transaction can be made more secure for the user of the payment device.
With the emergence of contactless type payment cards and phones as payment devices, the availability of payment devices with IC chips is increasing. Unfortunately, many online merchants still format data as magnetic stripe type transactions, because they have not yet converted to data formats for chip type transactions. While transactions can still be conducted using chip type cards if a consumer manually inputs account information into a client computer or the like, the merchant will still process the transaction as a legacy magnetic stripe transaction instead of a chip card type transaction. Consequently, many of the security features and other features of chip type cards cannot be utilized by such merchants.
It would be desirable to provide for methods which can allow merchants and others to realize the benefits of transactions conducted with portable devices containing chips, without requiring merchants and others to make changes to their computer systems.
Embodiments of the invention address these and other problems, both individually and collectively.